ESO Population Declining @ SteamCharts

Juhasow

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

Juhasow wrote: »

It's always declining after chapter hype is over.

Which is fine, but it's declined more this year than in past years, which is the concerning trend.

There is nothing concerning about that. There are hundereds of reasons for that. Some are connected to ESO some are connected to other games which also influence ESO charts.

Charts for this year are more stable. Previous 2 years with chapters had waves of jumps and drops from one month to another and in this year we had stable growth and then stable drop but there was 4 moths in a row where population was ~15k which didnt happened in previous years. Average amount of players from january to august is also higher this year. Also during this year there was only 1 drop of population higher then 10% when in previous years drops like that were more common. For now this year looks more stable then previous ones because it have smaller jumps but also smaller drops.

Juhasow

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

Guys, I spent most of my gaming time during last year in ESO. And I was buying everything I liked in CS before they pooped on the lore with bosmer&argonian changes. TES lore is the only fantasy lore universe I care. I will have zero profit if this game will go down, I am interested in ESO's thriving and growth. So I want devs to stop with random balance shake downs...
They are awful, both U23 and U24. Rosters are e-m-p-t-y in progression groups. Some guilds shut down, for example one of main craglorn PC EU guilds was disbanded. Guild chats which were lively, now near dead. Ofc this is just my experience, and other guild may be bustling with happy motivated players. But recent poll shows, that majority have issues with guild activity:

The guilds are always dying, dead, and on their last legs. Heck, according to predictions here in the forum, there aren't any guilds left, and haven't been for years, now.

Again.... I cannot tell you how many times this game has died here in the forum because the studio chased away all the players. Seriously, someone get the big gun out and shoot this game. It refuses to die at the hands of the inept studio.

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

The fact that we are sitting at the same concurrent population 12 months later is worrying. The fact that ZOS lost 30% of its active player base in a span of 4 months is concerning. It's the first time that the game has lost players for 4 straight months since early 2016.

And it might be worrying, not that we are the ones that should be worried, if this was across the entire player base rather than just Steam players. You talk like these numbers cover everyone playing on all platforms, and they do not.

It's a massive sample size. You can very reliably extrapolate these trends to the rest of the player base.

No it's not. No You can't. If You want to prove me wrong bring up mathematical arguments supporting Your claim because as far as I remember from statistics size of the sample is less important then representativeness of it.

Juhasow

Facefister wrote: »

YouTube:

ZenimaxOnlineStudios - 114k subscribers
FINAL FANTASY XIV - 328k subscribers
World of Warcraft - 1.31m subscribers
Guild Wars 2 - 153K subscribers

Problem is @Facefister that last time ZoS used their channel was 3 years ago and then they moved to Bethesda Softworks channel. So now we should add that 1,6M of bethesda channel also ? :thinking:

Juhasow

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

danno8 wrote: »

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

danno8 wrote: »

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

Player retention has certainly gotten worse over last year.

We went from 15.5k online when Summerset came out last year to 12.5k in September.

This year, we went from 17.8k when Elsweyr came out, down to the same 12.5k in September. You would expect growth from last September to this September, but there hasn't been any.

Ermmm...you just gave numbers that showed that more people came back for Elsweyr than for Summerset. That IS growth. Sure they all left again, leaving a similar base but from a marketing standpoint Elsweyr generated 75% more players playing the game than Summerset did.

If you ran a festival that turned out 75% more people this year than last you would consider that a huge success, it hardly matters that they are all gone now that the festival is over.

And all this decline in the last few months relating back to the current patch notes that have been out for a week is just...I don't even think the OP can truly believe that connection.

Population growth and player retention are crucial to MMO health. The fact that ZOS wasn't able to retain any of those new players and grow the population from last year is at least a bit worrying

If you take the average of Jan-August 2018 and compare it to the average of Jan-August 2019 it goes from 11843 to 14862. So from a year over year perspective there has been growth.

The largest average month and the largest peak concurrent month in 2019 was greater than the largest average and peak month in 2018, and the lowest average month and the lowest peak concurrent month in 2018 were lower than their 2019 counterpart.

In any way you look at it 2019 has been ESO best year yet (according to Steam charts). The fact that the OP is trying use the last couple months of trail off as proof of anything is laughable.

Why would you cherry pick a random length of time?

Right now, the average concurrent population is the same as it was last year. That's the most recent data point, and the most relevant as it tells us about the game's current population.

The fact that we are sitting at the same concurrent population 12 months later is worrying. The fact that ZOS lost 30% of its active player base in a span of 4 months is concerning. It's the first time that the game has lost players for 4 straight months since early 2016.

No, the game isn't dead. But this is a worrying trend.

If anyone is cherry picking anything then it's You. You accuse someone for picking certain multiple moths periods of time and comparing them yet few phrases later You do the same with way shorter and more separated periods of time. So I assume in may this year You were celebrating the game being in greatest shape ever ? You were also partying in march , april , june , july and then in august You've stopped because "worrying trend" started to appear ? "most recent data point" argument made me laugh.

I also like how You pick data to support Your argumentation. You say that it's 1st time when game have lost people 4 months in a row but You forgot to mention that before that game was gaining players 6 moths in a row for the 1st time. Basically both years before 2019 had 6/6 split of months with population growing vs declining so even if we would have population declining up to the end of the year it would still be the same as last years and if we would notice atleast 1 more month of population growth then we wil have best year ever. This is actually very promising trend not very worrying one. Your juggling with arguments just to support Your claim is funny. Calm down get real and let people that know something about math work with numbers because You proved many times in this thread and in other ones that Your math knowledge is low.

Facefister

Juhasow wrote: »

Facefister wrote: »

YouTube:

ZenimaxOnlineStudios - 114k subscribers
FINAL FANTASY XIV - 328k subscribers
World of Warcraft - 1.31m subscribers
Guild Wars 2 - 153K subscribers

Problem is @Facefister that last time ZoS used their channel was 3 years ago and then they moved to Bethesda Softworks channel. So now we should add that 1,6M of bethesda channel also ? :thinking:

A channel of a studio with multiple games vs a channel dedicated solely on one game?

Taleof2Cities

Folks, just let @MLGProPlayer and @Lord_Eomer bask in their fantasyland ... so that the thread will end it’s course.

MLGProPlayer

Taleof2Cities wrote: »

Folks, just let @MLGProPlayer and @Lord_Eomer bask in their fantasyland ... so that the thread will end it’s course.

The only people living in a fantasy world are those ignoring objective statistical trends.

It's very common to observe this behaviour in MMO populations. No one wants to admit "their" game, which they've sunk thousands of hours into, is experiencing a population decline.

These declines aren't irreversible, but it's healthy to discuss them, versus sweeping them under the rug and pretending things are going great.

DaveMoeDee

Lord_Eomer wrote: »

magictucktuck wrote: »

I would imagine it pops back up when dlc drops, it's still 10k more that it was a few years ago

Since last 4 months its declining and after this DLC it will widen.

Dragonhold DLC is no way worth coming back, lack of contents, extraordinary nerfs

What you are saying is very speculative. The quantitative facts are that August was down 10k from the previous year but September is currently up slightly.

Look at August to November of 2018. The current decline of players is a big bowl of nothing. Seems like the normal cycle. We see a peak in q2 when chapter released. I expect we will see that regularly. I assume free Steam trials can also lead to bumps.

I am amazed that people can talk about nerfs leading to people abandoning the game once again. I'm guessing you are new and weren't around for the Templar funeral skit. Sounds like a broken record to me.

evoniee

i never got a problem play this with steam.
except one time when i have to redownload 90gb and reinstall.

Ri_Khan

Ok folks who don't know anything about math and are just making %#!& up because "muh ememohhh"... let's just say there's a million current players (which I highly doubt is even that many), determining something about that population with a 99% confidence level and with only a 1% margin of error, the ideal sample size is around 16,300. The Steam numbers are definitely more than enough to determine trends here.

Elsonso

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

These declines aren't irreversible, but it's healthy to discuss them, versus sweeping them under the rug and pretending things are going great.

Just a quick reminder that this is neither our duty, nor our role, to monitor and fix.

Wolfshead

Lord_Eomer wrote: »

ZOS is again on a wrong track, nerfing everything and letting players leave ESO.

Lack of good contents are also to blame, players are asking for new Solo Arena or Duo but Q4 DLC becomes such a disappointment.

I have also taken a break from ESO, will get back once ZOS start putting things back on track.



Source: https://steamcharts.com/app/306130

Again that ONLY show people that buy ESO from Steam I have with all my friends buy the ESO from ZoS own store so again those number is not 100% right and I guess me and my friends is not the only one that buys ESO from ZoS so please stop say thing when you don't have all number or fact and if this game is going the wrong way why is that I have this weekend alone have no problem queue for dungeon with wait time less then 10 min while WoW I have to wait up to 2 hour to get in to low lvl dungeon again if you go to post crap like this at least have the decency get number and fact right before you start to post DOOM post like this

idk

lordrichter wrote: »

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

Guys, I spent most of my gaming time during last year in ESO. And I was buying everything I liked in CS before they pooped on the lore with bosmer&argonian changes. TES lore is the only fantasy lore universe I care. I will have zero profit if this game will go down, I am interested in ESO's thriving and growth. So I want devs to stop with random balance shake downs...
They are awful, both U23 and U24. Rosters are e-m-p-t-y in progression groups. Some guilds shut down, for example one of main craglorn PC EU guilds was disbanded. Guild chats which were lively, now near dead. Ofc this is just my experience, and other guild may be bustling with happy motivated players. But recent poll shows, that majority have issues with guild activity:

The guilds are always dying, dead, and on their last legs. Heck, according to predictions here in the forum, there aren't any guilds left, and haven't been for years, now.

Again.... I cannot tell you how many times this game has died here in the forum because the studio chased away all the players. Seriously, someone get the big gun out and shoot this game. It refuses to die at the hands of the inept studio.

LOL. So true. People have been claiming this game was dying for more than 5 years. Eventually they will be proven correct but it will be quite a few years from now. I am sure Zos ignores such petty claims.

Yes, there is been one blip in the growth trend this month but to call out the sky is falling because of one data point is somewhat absurd.

Jaraal

Juhasow wrote: »

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

Guys, I spent most of my gaming time during last year in ESO. And I was buying everything I liked in CS before they pooped on the lore with bosmer&argonian changes. TES lore is the only fantasy lore universe I care. I will have zero profit if this game will go down, I am interested in ESO's thriving and growth. So I want devs to stop with random balance shake downs...
They are awful, both U23 and U24. Rosters are e-m-p-t-y in progression groups. Some guilds shut down, for example one of main craglorn PC EU guilds was disbanded. Guild chats which were lively, now near dead. Ofc this is just my experience, and other guild may be bustling with happy motivated players. But recent poll shows, that majority have issues with guild activity:

The guilds are always dying, dead, and on their last legs. Heck, according to predictions here in the forum, there aren't any guilds left, and haven't been for years, now.

Again.... I cannot tell you how many times this game has died here in the forum because the studio chased away all the players. Seriously, someone get the big gun out and shoot this game. It refuses to die at the hands of the inept studio.

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

The fact that we are sitting at the same concurrent population 12 months later is worrying. The fact that ZOS lost 30% of its active player base in a span of 4 months is concerning. It's the first time that the game has lost players for 4 straight months since early 2016.

And it might be worrying, not that we are the ones that should be worried, if this was across the entire player base rather than just Steam players. You talk like these numbers cover everyone playing on all platforms, and they do not.

It's a massive sample size. You can very reliably extrapolate these trends to the rest of the player base.

as far as I remember from statistics size of the sample is less important then representativeness of it.

What I don't understand is how people are deciding that people who enter the login screen from a Steam app are somehow different from people who enter the login screen from a different app? Do Steam users somehow have lower IQs? Lower attention spans that will make them more likely to jump from game to game? How are Steam users less representative of ESO players in general?

Juhasow

Facefister wrote: »

Juhasow wrote: »

Facefister wrote: »

YouTube:

ZenimaxOnlineStudios - 114k subscribers
FINAL FANTASY XIV - 328k subscribers
World of Warcraft - 1.31m subscribers
Guild Wars 2 - 153K subscribers

Problem is @Facefister that last time ZoS used their channel was 3 years ago and then they moved to Bethesda Softworks channel. So now we should add that 1,6M of bethesda channel also ? :thinking:

A channel of a studio with multiple games vs a channel dedicated solely on one game?

It's still more accurate then comparing a channel that was active for 2-3 years and stopped to publish anything 3 years ago vs a channels that were active for 7-10 years and are still active now.

I think You didnt catch the irony.

Elsonso

idk wrote: »

LOL. So true. People have been claiming this game was dying for more than 5 years. Eventually they will be proven correct but it will be quite a few years from now. I am sure Zos ignores such petty claims.

As. ZOS. Should. ZOS knows far more about the state of their business, and the game, than any of the players participating in the forum.

Juhasow

Jaraal wrote: »

Juhasow wrote: »

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

Guys, I spent most of my gaming time during last year in ESO. And I was buying everything I liked in CS before they pooped on the lore with bosmer&argonian changes. TES lore is the only fantasy lore universe I care. I will have zero profit if this game will go down, I am interested in ESO's thriving and growth. So I want devs to stop with random balance shake downs...
They are awful, both U23 and U24. Rosters are e-m-p-t-y in progression groups. Some guilds shut down, for example one of main craglorn PC EU guilds was disbanded. Guild chats which were lively, now near dead. Ofc this is just my experience, and other guild may be bustling with happy motivated players. But recent poll shows, that majority have issues with guild activity:

The guilds are always dying, dead, and on their last legs. Heck, according to predictions here in the forum, there aren't any guilds left, and haven't been for years, now.

Again.... I cannot tell you how many times this game has died here in the forum because the studio chased away all the players. Seriously, someone get the big gun out and shoot this game. It refuses to die at the hands of the inept studio.

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

The fact that we are sitting at the same concurrent population 12 months later is worrying. The fact that ZOS lost 30% of its active player base in a span of 4 months is concerning. It's the first time that the game has lost players for 4 straight months since early 2016.

And it might be worrying, not that we are the ones that should be worried, if this was across the entire player base rather than just Steam players. You talk like these numbers cover everyone playing on all platforms, and they do not.

It's a massive sample size. You can very reliably extrapolate these trends to the rest of the player base.

as far as I remember from statistics size of the sample is less important then representativeness of it.

What I don't understand is how people are deciding that people who enter the login screen from a Steam app are somehow different from people who enter the login screen from a different app? Do Steam users somehow have lower IQs? Lower attention spans that will make them more likely to jump from game to game? How are Steam users less representative of ESO players in general?

What I dont understand is how people are deciding anything about people logging from steam. Unless some research with representative sample will be provided nobody cant decide anything.

Do steam users have somehow lower IQ ? I dont know. Do You know that ? Can You provide results of any research that would answer that question ?

Do You know what statistics mean ? Let me help You
It's collecting and ANALYSING numerical data. Steam charts are just collecting it there is no analysis being made so we dont know who those ESO players on steam are and how they represent playerbase.

Nobody says steam users are less or more representative of ESO players in general. Their representativeness is just unknown and until it'll be known anyone who makes any claims based on steam charts have no valid argument.

JumpmanLane

You can’t go by steam. As many have said, Steams login issues drive people away from their launcher.

As for the login in issue being fixed, I helped a pal in disc. He bought the base game from Bethesda and was all good after. He told at least one other friend. I’m sure of at least 2 people who continue to play ESO...just not via steam, who won’t ever use steam again.

VaranisArano

Juhasow wrote: »

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

Guys, I spent most of my gaming time during last year in ESO. And I was buying everything I liked in CS before they pooped on the lore with bosmer&argonian changes. TES lore is the only fantasy lore universe I care. I will have zero profit if this game will go down, I am interested in ESO's thriving and growth. So I want devs to stop with random balance shake downs...
They are awful, both U23 and U24. Rosters are e-m-p-t-y in progression groups. Some guilds shut down, for example one of main craglorn PC EU guilds was disbanded. Guild chats which were lively, now near dead. Ofc this is just my experience, and other guild may be bustling with happy motivated players. But recent poll shows, that majority have issues with guild activity:

The guilds are always dying, dead, and on their last legs. Heck, according to predictions here in the forum, there aren't any guilds left, and haven't been for years, now.

Again.... I cannot tell you how many times this game has died here in the forum because the studio chased away all the players. Seriously, someone get the big gun out and shoot this game. It refuses to die at the hands of the inept studio.

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

The fact that we are sitting at the same concurrent population 12 months later is worrying. The fact that ZOS lost 30% of its active player base in a span of 4 months is concerning. It's the first time that the game has lost players for 4 straight months since early 2016.

And it might be worrying, not that we are the ones that should be worried, if this was across the entire player base rather than just Steam players. You talk like these numbers cover everyone playing on all platforms, and they do not.

It's a massive sample size. You can very reliably extrapolate these trends to the rest of the player base.

No it's not. No You can't. If You want to prove me wrong bring up mathematical arguments supporting Your claim because as far as I remember from statistics size of the sample is less important then representativeness of it.

Representiveness is the most important quality. Large Sample Sizes help with representativeness, and help with the accuracy of the conclusions.
Example: Political Polls tend to have fairly large sample sizes, and we've all seen the problems when their sample population isn't quite representative of the voting population.

So I will give the Steam Charts some credit. Its a heck of a lot more representative than the data than we get from tiny polls on the forums.

Its just that, as you've said, more representative than the forums does not equal representative of the whole playerbase.

There's an even more foundational issue with the arguments made, which is that the data on Steam Charts, even if we were to grant that its perfectly representative, can't tell us WHY players are logging in or not.

It can't even answer the most basic of questions about variables: Are less players playing ESO period OR are less players playing ESO on Steam? Due to the lack of data on other platforms, we can't even eliminate the log-in platform as a variable! (Says a Steam user who uses the non-Steam log-in because my account is older than Nov 2016). If there's a drop on Steam mirrored by other users, that's significant! (Or not, perhaps, because it doesnt tell us WHY, as in the case of players plummeting in Nov and Dec 2018.) If its not mirrored, then it isn't significant in regards to ESO. But we can't tell that from the given data.

At best, if we don't want to stretch the statistics, we can come to conclusions about the trends on Steam Charts, and maybe make some guesses as to the cause, such as Elsweyr, EU server performance, and the start of the school year. Without more data sets, we can't eliminate enough variables to draw conclusions about the whole player base.

Man, it must be fun to be the guy or gal who works for ZOS who does have access to all the stats! (Or not fun, I suppose, from the POV of those who think the game is "dying".)

JD2013

ESO: *Exists*

Poeple:

MeadDrinker02

The game is dead.. I am debating on canceling my sub and buying Borderlands 3 tonight, at least that game isn't ridden with all of these problems and nerfs.. I need something more stable and does not drains my time, money and patience. Like seriously.. This game is a joke with all of the constant changes and nerfs to skills. Get your *** together ZOS and hire professionals to balance this game properly or something.. PEACE!

Malmai

They need to remake this game with better engine than 2005 (single core edition) but till than you keep cashing in money on dlc's and loot boxes believing they will fix it... (all you do is providing CEO's and stuff with yachts). GL

MeadDrinker02

Like why do you thing GM is going down the drain, you push crappy products people are gonna buy else where

Ydrisselle

Wolfshead wrote: »

Lord_Eomer wrote: »

ZOS is again on a wrong track, nerfing everything and letting players leave ESO.

Lack of good contents are also to blame, players are asking for new Solo Arena or Duo but Q4 DLC becomes such a disappointment.

I have also taken a break from ESO, will get back once ZOS start putting things back on track.



Source: https://steamcharts.com/app/306130

Again that ONLY show people that buy ESO from Steam I have with all my friends buy the ESO from ZoS own store so again those number is not 100% right and I guess me and my friends is not the only one that buys ESO from ZoS so please stop say thing when you don't have all number or fact and if this game is going the wrong way why is that I have this weekend alone have no problem queue for dungeon with wait time less then 10 min while WoW I have to wait up to 2 hour to get in to low lvl dungeon again if you go to post crap like this at least have the decency get number and fact right before you start to post DOOM post like this

You really can't compare that: WoW has significantly less low level players, so finding people to low level dungeons is hard. However in ESO everybody can go to the same dungeon, so a lvl20 player can be paired with a CP1000 player - which means you have much more chance to find somebody for your dungeon since there aren't low level dungeons, only dungeons (scaled to everybody's own stats).

WhisperLFE

Jaraal wrote: »

What I don't understand is how people are deciding that people who enter the login screen from a Steam app are somehow different from people who enter the login screen from a different app? Do Steam users somehow have lower IQs? Lower attention spans that will make them more likely to jump from game to game? How are Steam users less representative of ESO players in general?

As was said above, it's undetermined if Steam players are representative of the ESO population. You also get extraneous influence from the platform itself. The players might be exactly the same, overall, as the average ESO player. But until we know that, we really can't generalize Steam data to ESO as a whole.

Beyond that, we'd also want to look at the current year relative to years past to see if there are significant differences across time spans. It sounds like folks have looked at the data (I only skimmed the first and last pages of the thread), but actually analyzing the data would give a bit more clarity than just eyeballing the numbers. And even then, only comparing to years past with similar content release cycles would be most relevant.

Which, of course, would still tell us only if the changes we're seeing are different from those in years past. Still wouldn't readily identify the cause.

But I agree that evaluating the trends is a potentially helpful snippet of information.

MLGProPlayer

Juhasow wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

Juhasow wrote: »

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

Guys, I spent most of my gaming time during last year in ESO. And I was buying everything I liked in CS before they pooped on the lore with bosmer&argonian changes. TES lore is the only fantasy lore universe I care. I will have zero profit if this game will go down, I am interested in ESO's thriving and growth. So I want devs to stop with random balance shake downs...
They are awful, both U23 and U24. Rosters are e-m-p-t-y in progression groups. Some guilds shut down, for example one of main craglorn PC EU guilds was disbanded. Guild chats which were lively, now near dead. Ofc this is just my experience, and other guild may be bustling with happy motivated players. But recent poll shows, that majority have issues with guild activity:

The guilds are always dying, dead, and on their last legs. Heck, according to predictions here in the forum, there aren't any guilds left, and haven't been for years, now.

Again.... I cannot tell you how many times this game has died here in the forum because the studio chased away all the players. Seriously, someone get the big gun out and shoot this game. It refuses to die at the hands of the inept studio.

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

The fact that we are sitting at the same concurrent population 12 months later is worrying. The fact that ZOS lost 30% of its active player base in a span of 4 months is concerning. It's the first time that the game has lost players for 4 straight months since early 2016.

And it might be worrying, not that we are the ones that should be worried, if this was across the entire player base rather than just Steam players. You talk like these numbers cover everyone playing on all platforms, and they do not.

It's a massive sample size. You can very reliably extrapolate these trends to the rest of the player base.

as far as I remember from statistics size of the sample is less important then representativeness of it.

What I don't understand is how people are deciding that people who enter the login screen from a Steam app are somehow different from people who enter the login screen from a different app? Do Steam users somehow have lower IQs? Lower attention spans that will make them more likely to jump from game to game? How are Steam users less representative of ESO players in general?

What I dont understand is how people are deciding anything about people logging from steam. Unless some research with representative sample will be provided nobody cant decide anything.

Do steam users have somehow lower IQ ? I dont know. Do You know that ? Can You provide results of any research that would answer that question ?

Do You know what statistics mean ? Let me help You
It's collecting and ANALYSING numerical data. Steam charts are just collecting it there is no analysis being made so we dont know who those ESO players on steam are and how they represent playerbase.

Nobody says steam users are less or more representative of ESO players in general. Their representativeness is just unknown and until it'll be known anyone who makes any claims based on steam charts have no valid argument.

The onus is on you to provide theoretical or empirical evidence that the Steam population, of at least 32,000 players (I say at least, since that's the peak concurrent population, not the total Steam population, which is many times higher) is not representative of the broader population. Good luck with that. The sample in question is so massive that it is virtually impossible for it to be behaviourally different from the broader population. The only time you can get differences in behaviour between samples that large is if you poll along very strict generational or ideological lines (i.e. a political opinion survey polling only 32,000 baby boomers in Alabama).

MLGProPlayer

MeadDrinker02 wrote: »

The game is dead.. I am debating on canceling my sub and buying Borderlands 3 tonight, at least that game isn't ridden with all of these problems and nerfs.. I need something more stable and does not drains my time, money and patience. Like seriously.. This game is a joke with all of the constant changes and nerfs to skills. Get your *** together ZOS and hire professionals to balance this game properly or something.. PEACE!

Let's be real. Borderlands is published by 2K, one of the worst publishers in gaming. They aren't the saviour you're looking for.

MLGProPlayer

VaranisArano wrote: »

Juhasow wrote: »

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

Guys, I spent most of my gaming time during last year in ESO. And I was buying everything I liked in CS before they pooped on the lore with bosmer&argonian changes. TES lore is the only fantasy lore universe I care. I will have zero profit if this game will go down, I am interested in ESO's thriving and growth. So I want devs to stop with random balance shake downs...
They are awful, both U23 and U24. Rosters are e-m-p-t-y in progression groups. Some guilds shut down, for example one of main craglorn PC EU guilds was disbanded. Guild chats which were lively, now near dead. Ofc this is just my experience, and other guild may be bustling with happy motivated players. But recent poll shows, that majority have issues with guild activity:

The guilds are always dying, dead, and on their last legs. Heck, according to predictions here in the forum, there aren't any guilds left, and haven't been for years, now.

Again.... I cannot tell you how many times this game has died here in the forum because the studio chased away all the players. Seriously, someone get the big gun out and shoot this game. It refuses to die at the hands of the inept studio.

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

The fact that we are sitting at the same concurrent population 12 months later is worrying. The fact that ZOS lost 30% of its active player base in a span of 4 months is concerning. It's the first time that the game has lost players for 4 straight months since early 2016.

And it might be worrying, not that we are the ones that should be worried, if this was across the entire player base rather than just Steam players. You talk like these numbers cover everyone playing on all platforms, and they do not.

It's a massive sample size. You can very reliably extrapolate these trends to the rest of the player base.

No it's not. No You can't. If You want to prove me wrong bring up mathematical arguments supporting Your claim because as far as I remember from statistics size of the sample is less important then representativeness of it.

Representiveness is the most important quality. Large Sample Sizes help with representativeness, and help with the accuracy of the conclusions.
Example: Political Polls tend to have fairly large sample sizes, and we've all seen the problems when their sample population isn't quite representative of the voting population.

So I will give the Steam Charts some credit. Its a heck of a lot more representative than the data than we get from tiny polls on the forums.

Its just that, as you've said, more representative than the forums does not equal representative of the whole playerbase.

There's an even more foundational issue with the arguments made, which is that the data on Steam Charts, even if we were to grant that its perfectly representative, can't tell us WHY players are logging in or not.

It can't even answer the most basic of questions about variables: Are less players playing ESO period OR are less players playing ESO on Steam? Due to the lack of data on other platforms, we can't even eliminate the log-in platform as a variable! (Says a Steam user who uses the non-Steam log-in because my account is older than Nov 2016). If there's a drop on Steam mirrored by other users, that's significant! (Or not, perhaps, because it doesnt tell us WHY, as in the case of players plummeting in Nov and Dec 2018.) If its not mirrored, then it isn't significant in regards to ESO. But we can't tell that from the given data.

At best, if we don't want to stretch the statistics, we can come to conclusions about the trends on Steam Charts, and maybe make some guesses as to the cause, such as Elsweyr, EU server performance, and the start of the school year. Without more data sets, we can't eliminate enough variables to draw conclusions about the whole player base.

Man, it must be fun to be the guy or gal who works for ZOS who does have access to all the stats! (Or not fun, I suppose, from the POV of those who think the game is "dying".)

What you describe are outlier scenarios. When a sample gets into the tens/hundreds of thousands, it gets extremely close to perfect representation. There is no demographic/generational/ideological/etc. split between Steam users/non-Steam users (as you can have with samples in political polls) which would indicate some sort of behavioural difference between the populations. They're both just samples of diverse gamers (Steam has 90 million users, for reference).

MeadDrinker02

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

MeadDrinker02 wrote: »

The game is dead.. I am debating on canceling my sub and buying Borderlands 3 tonight, at least that game isn't ridden with all of these problems and nerfs.. I need something more stable and does not drains my time, money and patience. Like seriously.. This game is a joke with all of the constant changes and nerfs to skills. Get your *** together ZOS and hire professionals to balance this game properly or something.. PEACE!

Let's be real. Borderlands is published by 2K, one of the worst publishers in gaming. They aren't the saviour you're looking for.

they can't be as bad as ZOS right now?..

MLGProPlayer

MeadDrinker02 wrote: »

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

MeadDrinker02 wrote: »

The game is dead.. I am debating on canceling my sub and buying Borderlands 3 tonight, at least that game isn't ridden with all of these problems and nerfs.. I need something more stable and does not drains my time, money and patience. Like seriously.. This game is a joke with all of the constant changes and nerfs to skills. Get your *** together ZOS and hire professionals to balance this game properly or something.. PEACE!

Let's be real. Borderlands is published by 2K, one of the worst publishers in gaming. They aren't the saviour you're looking for.

they can't be as bad as ZOS right now?..

I mean, they published this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=105&v=46MQ1ZMZ-l4